


Six Tales of Treason

by neuxue



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 08:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13830252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuxue/pseuds/neuxue
Summary: "Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that, I'm Russian. Or I used to be."Or, six times Natasha addresses the question of why.





	Six Tales of Treason

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to @redbells for the prompt, for holding me accountable, for beta-ing, and for Steve's better lines.

####  I. Steve

"Why did you defect?"

"Why didn't you?"

"You know what they say; _It is sweet and right…_ " Steve shrugs and smiles softly, sadly; it is the most obvious of his tells, the smile that means memories of a suddenly distant past. The smile of remembrance that is not quite nostalgia, for a present so abruptly turned to past.

Natasha smiles wryly. "It sounds better in Latin. That way you can pretend you don't understand what exactly they're asking you to do."

"I don't know, Nat, seemed pretty simple to me. Sign up, kill Nazis."

She laughs softly. "Your war and mine were…different."

"It's all the same war. It's just the names that are different."

"That and the explosives."

"Yeah, those certainly got bigger while I was on ice."

Natasha laughs and Steve smiles a real smile this time and the unanswered question fades into the familiar silence of all they need not say. 

***

"Why did you defect?"

"Why did you rescue Bucky from the lab?" 

"You saw— you know what they were doing to him there."

"You let the army do the same to you. Although I suppose the tech was better. _Americans_."

"That was different. I made a choice."

" _Pro patria mori._ I know."

***

"Why don't you ever tell me why you defected?"

"Why do you think?"

"Because I'm Captain America, paragon of loyalty and justice, and I couldn't possibly condone treason of any kind?"

"You are currently a fugitive of both civil and military justice, wanted by at least twelve governments including your own."

Steve shrugs, spreads his hands as if to concede the point. Natasha raises an eyebrow.

"So why won't you tell me, then?"

"Does it matter?" She gives the question no more weight than the rhetorical it so often is, but she watches his face closely, wanting an answer more than she cares to admit. 

"I guess not."

Even for her, it is not easy to look a disappointed Steve Rogers in the eyes. "You let yourself be remade in order to fight for your cause. I was done with being unmade for someone else's."

He is quiet for a long time, and she wonders if he sees the same figure in his thoughts that she does. 

"Did it work?" He asks finally.

"You of all people should understand—" she tries for levity and nearly succeeds "—freedom is complicated."

  


####  II. Tony

"Aren't you going to ask?"

"Don't need to. I have your file." Unspoken in his words lies the truth she released but still shies from, acknowledging only in glances and tangentials. _Everyone_ has her file now; all her secrets exposed. Except for those she never told. 

Besides, she is Russian. Exposure means nothing to one born of winter and snow and cruelty.

"And?" She raises an eyebrow, expression composed, her face and her skin and her self forming the armour the files forced her to shed. Beneath that armour lies ice, and beneath the ice, lies. The truth is hidden far deeper, and though the red can penetrate, ordinary ink and paper and history cannot. It does not matter what stories are spun from the threads of the spider's webs; the threads themselves are gossamer and illusion, and easily enough remade, once they have served their purpose. As for the spider's prey…her hands have painted portraits darker than any reporter's dream, darker than any civilian's nightmare, and there is little they can do with the blood she has spilled that she has not already done. Red bleeds to black in the dark, and as the one to bring these files to light, she knows where the shadows will fall.

But Tony, with his genius and with Jarvis, could begin to piece together a more dangerous truth. The man who turned a wound into a gleaming fortress could disarm her if he cared to try. All she can hope is that Tony Stark, of all the Avengers, knows the value of armour and image and a reforged heart.

"And I don't like being handed things," he says lightly, turning back to his screen.

  


####  III. Thor

She wonders idly how many people have sat down for pizza and philosophy with a god. The number can't be high, but she also can't be certain what Loki has and hasn't done, and on what scale. It's a regular point of frustration but she would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy the challenge of trying to predict, understand, and read a trickster god of lies. It's been a long time since she's faced someone who might exceed her.

Now, facing his brother, she wonders. The others have always seemed comfortable with Thor in inverse proportion to their discomfort with Loki, but there is a presence to him, a depth to his eyes that belies the surface innocence of his demeanour. Thor is amiable and disarming; it is a dangerous combination, for all that he seems a benevolent god.

"The others, they don't trust you the way they do each other."

No, Loki is far from the only cunning one in that family. She smiles.

"Occupational hazard," she says around a bite of pizza. 

"Even my brother is…wary of you," he presses, examining the pepperoni skeptically. "Is this meat?"

"It's delicious."

Thor raises an eyebrow and takes a bit, doubtful expression turning slowly to delight. It's easy to see, watching him, how so many see him as little more than a moderately more erudite Hulk. It's also easy to see, watching him, that he is nothing of the sort. Wiping pizza grease from her chin, she can admit there are advantages to this particular persona. 

"There aren't many people Loki considers a threat," Thor continues, entirely undistracted. 

Meeting that ancient alien gaze, she thinks she might actually prefer facing Loki. Loki is slippery and difficult to read by nature and design, and that makes him more predictable, in only by a little. Thor…

"I have a very particular skillset," she begins, echoing another conversation and wondering if Thor can tell. 

"You were a spy," he affirms, as if stating the obvious. But then, it is common knowledge now. Her means and methods are known to the world, and everyone from the President to the corner shopkeeper believes to be an expert on her motives. "And," he continues, still in the tone of one stating rather than speculating, "no stranger to betrayal."

"The official term is treason."

"Yet although Loki fears you, the others do not. Not the way they fear him."

"I made a choice. I could have walked away; they know that."

"And instead you join them in fighting the evils of this realm, winning righteous victories, standing strong beside your allies, vanquishing your foes in fair fights."

There is no sarcasm in his tone but she is not fooled. It is difficult to glare with a mouth full of pizza, but she mastered the art long ago. 

"Fair as any apocalypse," she says. "They know what I am."

"A traitor, by your own admission. What was your treason?"

She shrugs, a mortal to a god. "It’s a simple enough story. There was war between human nations. I belonged to one of them, and I made a choice."

"Have you ever betrayed _them_?" 

"Only by revealing their secrets to the world. And then standing aside as they nearly destroyed each other." She has never spoken the words aloud before. 

He is quiet for a moment, contemplative, and she can almost see a world's embers in his one blue eye. 

"I let my planet burn."

"And you let your brother set the fire."

"The destruction was his, the treason mine, but it was a necessary betrayal." It is absolution, offered freely from the lips of a god. He does not look away until she nods solemnly, acknowledging that his words are for her as much as for herself.

"For Russia, I was the match." 

Rare is the regard that grants understanding untouched by fear or pity. "And so you became a traitor, while I became a king."

"Not here you're not," she says, and deftly steals the last piece of pizza from his plate.

  


####  IV. Clint

It is one question Clint has never asked her, for it is a story he knows in full. A narrative complete with danger, intrigue, and an unlikely hero. A finished story, with all questions answered; one that need not be revisited. His truth is true enough for him, even if to her it seems a lie. 

But then, to her, everything does.

  


####  V. Bruce

 _Monster_ hangs in the air between them; it has ever since that conversation, and Natasha has never been one for regret—there are necessary negatives in her particular skillset—but this comes close. She has interrogated a silver-tongued god of lies and come out victorious; she is not one to miscalculate when she takes aim with knives or words, to bestow either pain or mercy. But she got sloppy. A little too aware of her lingering instinctive fear, a little too drunk on the thrill of defying it, a little too reckless, even for her. 

_Reckless._ She pushes the thought away, because she knows all too well what lies at the end of it. A perfectly aimed bullet, a careless deadly grace, laughter like ice, praise like knives. She pushes the memory away, because the truth of it will shatter this spun-glass illusion and she is not yet ready to brave its razor edges. She pushes the truth away, because for all the edges of ice or glass, it is mirrors that cut deepest.

 _Mirror._ What had she been thinking? She knows only one man who would be flattered at being mirrored by a monster.

The man who stands before her is no monster, a truth she suspects he may fear even more than the lie.

"They can call you monster all they like—it's an easy word to use." _For others, for yourself, for anything you cannot face._ "It's the specifics that are harder."

"Beast? Brute? Killer?"

"Assassin, spy, traitor. _Widow._ "

"Traitor?"

"I did betray my country, even if I did it for yours." 

"Why? Because they…" he trails off, and as he looks away she almost hates him.

"Made me into a monster?" Scorn suffuses the word and she cannot tell if it is frustration with herself for ever uttering it in his presence, or with the ones who thought monstrosity was as simple as needle and knife. Or with him, for believing it. "They did what they could to make me into what they thought a monster should be."

"You seem to have an interesting definition of 'monster', then" he says with the gentle anger she recognises as the precursor to danger. "You and I qualify, but you seem to have no problem with Barnes." 

"A weapon is only as monstrous as its wielder," she says, fighting to keep winter from her voice, fighting harder to keep winter from her thoughts. 

"And which one am I?" He asks bitterly. 

"That's a choice we all have to make, sooner or later." Red in her ledger, a monster in the mirror. Blood on snow and music on memory—"those of us who can."

"Like you did, _Black Widow_?" Unspoken: _like you did, traitor?_

She shrugs, smiles. "They tried to turn me into a nightmare—so I became theirs."

  


####  VI. Bucky

For once this lifetime they are not fighting, and she forbids her body to flinch as he steps closer to her. The stillness of his face makes her wonder if he is hiding the same instinct. Or perhaps something else entirely.

"Do you recognise me this time?" The words are cruel, like every kindness between them.

" _Little Spider_ " he says in Russian smooth and deadly as his every movement—until he falters, hesitates, shakes his head. Continues in English. "Wait. No. It's Natasha now, isn't it?" It is strange, to see warmth in eyes where she only ever saw snow. 

She nods, for once not trusting herself to speak. It is one thing to address the Winter Soldier in combat; it is another to face Bucky Barnes unarmed, unarmoured, with neither oblivion nor mission to shield them from each other.

"Why?" he asks, and the expression on his face is unremarkable except for the fact that it is there at all. 

"Which version do you want?"


End file.
